Building Blocks – How the World Food Programme is harnessing Blockchain technology to deliver humanitarian assistance

What started with a Proof-of-Concept in Pakistan in early January this year, has been transformed in a fully functional Blockchain pilot being rolled out in Jordan in May, 2017. The Building Blocks project not only demonstrates the power and the impact of blockchain technology and its potential to enhance the lives of millions but it is proof of the technology’s potential for efficiency gains for a humanitarian agency, such as WFP.

Based on the early, however robust prototype field tested in Pakistan, the Building Blocks pilot in Jordan now serves thousands of households in a Jordanian refugee camp Tazweed village. The inhabitants receive food vouchers that can be used in the village’s supermarket. The seamless integration of the existing iris scan identification technology into Building Blocks system allows the existing processes to stay in place without any need for changes for the beneficiaries, the supermarket nor WFP personnel. The only visible differences are a higher transparency of aid accounts for beneficiaries and easier bookkeeping for supermarket managers. The biggest, however invisible, advantage is a minimized risk of fraud or data mismanagement.

The economic benefits of harnessing Blockchain technology can amount to several million US-Dollars for the Jordanien refugee camp population, alone. The goal of the Building Blocks pilot is to demonstrate a fully-functional Blockchain solution that can serve as a role model and architecture for similar humanitarian projects worldwide and a base to develop other use cases.

The Datarella team wants to thank the WFP team, the IrisGuard team and our partners over at Parity Technologies for the great cooperation: from the beginning, we felt being one big team with everybody helping the others out when they needed it. Other than with this collaborative effort a project like Building Blocks would not have succeeded: Blockchain technology still is in its infancy and basic conditions in the field have proven to be challenging. Again: thank you very much for the opportunity to demonstrate the power and the real impact of Blockchain.

If you are interested in the Building Blocks project you might consider visiting our Ethereum Meetup on May, 16 .Here we will present more details and especially share our experiences gained in Tazweed village, Jordan